Dark Nova RPG Character Background- Kazeshini

Unohana "Kazeshini" Yumiko

The young woman shivered in the cold air as she lay on her side behind the reclamation dumpster. Her tremors were not merely due to the autumn air of this world, however, as the wounds she had received over the past twelve hours had bled out considerably. Night had fallen and the three moons that orbited this world- so far from her home and all she had known- were ascending over the rooftops of the buildings around her. The alleyway she had managed to reach before collapsing was in a market district, and with the shops closed at this hour and her pursuers hot on her tail it had been the only refuge she could find.Disoriented from blood loss, her vision greying at the edges, Unohana Yumiko’s thoughts drifted to how she had come to this miserable place as consciousness faded.
One of the youngest cadets to have ever made it into the elite Samurai corps of the Nippon Empire- and the youngest woman in the short time they had allowed females into the corps after bowing to public pressure- she had made a name for herself as she fought against the entrenched chauvinism to prove herself the equal of any man. Her mentor had been the first woman to ever make it into the Samurai, and she had taken Yumiko under her wing. Unfortunately, this meant that she also inherited her mentor’s enemies as well as the ones she had made. Many of the Old Guard within the Samurai believed that women had no place within the Emperor’s enforcers, and that while they may have been in conventional law enforcement for centuries the Samurai were off limits to their gender. Change came hard to some people, especially in a nation as entrenched in tradition as the Nippon Empire.
A hostage recovery operation proved to be an excellent opportunity for her enemies. The Yakuza had kidnapped a mid-level bureaucrat from the Ministry of Defense, using him as leverage to force the release of their oyabun who the Samurai had captured a week prior. Not wishing to lose face and absolutely unwilling to release the crime lord, the factions arrayed against Yumiko’s mentor decided to sacrifice the bureaucrat and set her protégé up as a scapegoat. Ordered in to lead a dynamic entry raid to seize the hostage, Yumiko knew this tactic was foolish. However, her adherence to the traditions of Bushido drove her to obey the orders of her superiors, no matter how stupid she believed them to be. The raid was going well until one of the Yakuza, amped up on stim drugs, threw a plasma grenade at one of her fellow officers. The grenade bounced off of the armor of the Samurai and detonated in the middle of the room, killing the surviving Yakuza, two Samurai, and the hostage.
Hung out to dry and accused of botching the raid, Yumiko found herself stripped of her position and dishonorably discharged from the Samurai corps. Only the behind-the-scenes intervention of her mentor kept her from being charged with the negligent homicide of the hostage and her fellow Samurai. Her family was shamed by her failure, regardless of her innocence of the responsibility, and cast her out. Homeless, jobless, and disgraced, Yumiko gathered up supplies from her various caches and booked passage off of her homeworld of Ganelon. The next year was one of turmoil and culture shock. While Ganelon had been a multinational world, being the first planet settled outside of Sol system and home to nearly ninety-six billion Terrans and millions of aliens, she had rarely left Atarashī Honshū, the Nipponese portion of the continent of Keppler. Cast adrift on the spaceways with only a few thousand credits in hard currency, she had eventually wound up here on Portland with only the clothes on her back and a few bits of specialized equipment.
Portland was a Freeport world, a vast planet of rolling hills, tundra and scrub trees, frigid oceans, and one major settlement of fifteen million settlers looking for a better life in the turine mines on two of the moons. Like many Freespace worlds, the corporation that owned this system cared little for law enforcement beyond ensuring their bottom line was not threatened. A sizeable black market and organized crime community had evolved, and Yumiko had tried to set up shop as an investigator to help the locals fight back. This morning that idealism had caught up with her.
Her training saved her life as she recognized the walk-up hitter from his body language and behavior. As he suddenly drew his weapon and brought it to bear on her, Yumiko’s exceptional hand-to-hand skills came into play reflexively. Having trained in Aikido since childhood, she easily disarmed and pinned the hitman, but an explosion of pain in her shoulder broke her hold as her left arm suddenly went limp and numb. A quick look and Yumiko found a two inch diameter hole burned neatly through her collar bone and shoulder. She struck the downed man with a vicious kick, rendering him unconscious, and ran for cover. She quickly determined that the beam had come from across the street on a rooftop. She poked her head out enough to try to get a bead on the location of the sniper and saw nothing. She snapped her head back a split second before another beam- brilliant blue-white in color and humming like a generator’s magnetic coil- burned through the air she had just occupied. It struck the pavement beyond her and a meter-wide crater exploded from the impact. A particle beam, then, and powerful. She realized she had been lucky that it had been on a much lower setting the first time, passing right through her without tearing her body apart with the thermal and kinetic impact of a stream of charged particles moving at the speed of light.
The downed man did not rise, but as he rolled over on the ground where she had pinned him his left hand tossed something behind the wall Yumiko hid behind. She recognized it as a small plasma grenade as it left his hand and wasted no time turning and running down the alley as fast as she could. The explosion rocked the buildings on either side of her, blowing apart their facings and sending plascrete chunks flying in all directions. Multiple shards struck her legs, back and arm, and Yumiko felt the burning of many wounds of varying severity. She staggered through the alley to the street on the other side. With ground cars a rarity by the time this colony had been established, the streets were narrow and designed for foot traffic and hoverbikes. As such, it was only a short sprint across the open ground- surprising many pedestrians along the way- before Yumiko was hurtling down yet another alley. She pulled a packet of sensor dust out and flung it behind her to coat the walls and floor of the alley and continued on.
As she emerged onto the next street, she turned right and ran for three blocks before backtracking through an open market to the street she had crossed earlier. Her caution was warranted as the sensor dust triggered and her HUD optic implant showed her the image of three large thugs running through the alley she had been in minutes before. Well-armed with mil-spec pulse pistols, they were not playing around. Yumiko ran some more, the squawks and cries of surprised pedestrians growing less and less common as night began to fall. For over three hours she ran through a maze of alleys, streets, buildings, and open parks as her mind began to falter from blood loss. Realizing she was in trouble, she staggered into an automated corner store and purchased an over-the-counter slap-patch of medical nanites, then stumbled back into the street.
Finding a narrow alley full of reclamation dumpsters and stacks of shipping crates and general debris, she slipped behind one of the dumpsters and applied the patch before she collapsed. As she slumped over to the ground she could feel the medical nanites coursing through her system, but knew they were out of their league to treat the injuries she had endured. They would stop the blood loss, however, which was what she was aiming for. Rest for a few hours would help as well, though she had little choice in that matter as she passed out.
“Is she dead?” A distant voice intruded into her consciousness an indeterminable amount of time later.
“Nope,” Another voice, this one a woman’s and sounding as if it was at the other end of a long tunnel, “She’s still suckin’ air. You wanna call the local med service before we skate?”
“No,” The first voice said, seeming nearer now as Yumiko slowly rose from the depths of unconsciousness, “That’s a lancer burn in her shoulder, sniper-build from the look of it. Normal lancer rifle would’ve blown her into confetti, that one was tight-beamed for precision. Betcha credits to donuts this has something to do with that shitstorm over on Caberna street yesterday.”
“Thought that was a gang shootout?” The woman said, and Yumiko felt hands on her rolling her onto her back
“Shit, Farah,” The man said with a chuckle, “We’ve been in the biz long enough to know the news is bullshit nine times in ten. No, that was a hit gone bad, no return fire at all. Look, she’s got a pulse pistol tucked into her waistband under the jacket. She could’ve fired back if it wasn’t overwhelming odds. Sounds like someone wanted this pretty little thing recycled.”
“So what do you wanna do, Bryce?” The woman- Farah, Yumiko realized- said, “Leave her here, call the local police, or what?”
“We take her with us,” Bryce replied thoughtfully, “Toss her in the regen tank on the ship.”
“What?!” Farah replied incredulously, “We just got hired to haul a load of highly illegal shit into very dangerous turf, and you want to drag a stray of dubious origins into the middle of that deal?”
“Cool it, Farah,” Bryce barked in a voice suddenly iron-spined with authority, “My ship, my rules. You knew that when you signed on. Look, we leave her here the Syndicate thugs that tried to pop her will get her. That mess yesterday has Gaheris written all over it, and they own the local cops. We get her offworld, drop her off somewhere safe, and say our merries, alright? She’s gunna be in the tank cooking for several hours anyway. Could get her to Folam or Charter’s Folly before she’s even done healing, and Gaheris has no presence there.”
“Bryce,” Farah said with exasperation in her voice, “I know you’re a sucker for a pretty face…”
“A fact that benefits you when you pull side deals behind my back,” Bryce said, and Yumiko could hear the smile in his voice as he did so.
“Point being,” Farah continued, “That you haven’t stopped to consider WHY Gaheris wants her dead. Maybe she’s not some innocent victim, maybe she’s tits-deep in some ugly dealings and they want her offed. Maybe she’s even worse than they are- granted, that would take some doing, like slave-trading-while-eating-live-kittens-level of evil at least- and they wanted to snuff her out because of that.”
“She’s a Core Worlder,” Bryce said, and Yumiko felt a strong, warm and calloused hand touch her face and gently move her head to the side slightly, then back, “Looks like this, out here near the Fringe, she could’ve made a fortune as a prostitute, a model, someone’s trophy wife, Spirits know what else. She wouldn’t need to get into the gangs. Hell, look at the bioscan I just did, she’s got mil-spec implants and bio-augs. She’s not a ganger, and I doubt she’s Syndicate. Hell, she might even be an undercover ISP agent.”
“And if she’s Inter-System Police,” Farah said with a grunt as she stood back up, “Then that’s even MORE reason to not have her aboard a Freetrader loaded with eighteen metric tonnes of contraband, neh?”
“Argument’s over,” Bryce said with finality, and Yumiko- now fully conscious, but feigning sleep to continue learning as much as she could- felt him slide his arms under her and easily lift her off the ground, “She’s coming with us. If she’s ISP, having saved her pretty little ass might pay off in the future. If she’s something else, she probably has money and might feel rather generous for our having saved her. Either way, I’m not leaving her here to get offed by Syndicate jackals. Open the door and start driving.”
Yumiko felt herself placed in the back seat of a hovertruck, and felt the lurch as it lifted off and shot skyward at a reckless speed. Farah was either a wild driver, or driving angry. Yumiko risked opening an eye a crack and saw a blond woman- the right side of her head shaved and tattooed with a glowing Chinese dragon, the honey-colored hair bound back in a series of tight braids bound together by a clasp at the nape of her neck- sitting on the right and a tall, broadly-built man with short salt-and-pepper hair on the left. Both wore leather dusters with obvious armor plating in the lining, and she could see the large plasma pulse pistol on the right thigh of the man. Through the window Yumiko saw the rooftops of highrises whiz past and the massive circular surface-to-orbit landing platforms of the spaceport ahead. The hovertruck swooped between several of these, some empty while others held ships of various sizes, and then slowed as it approached a smaller pad. Sitting on top of the platform was a rugged looking ship, small compared to many of the hulking commercial transports hundreds of meters in length around them, but openly sporting numerous weapons. A Goshawk-class Freetrader, Yumiko realized, one of the most common armed merchantmen in Terran space. As the hovertruck came close, the port-side cargo bay doors opened and the truck slid in, landing as the doors closed.
Once again, Yumiko was lifted and once again she feigned unconsciousness. A shock of pain from her shoulder and three points in her back made her grey out again, and when she came out of her daze she was hovering above a medical exam table. Looking out of a barely cracked eye, she saw Farah run a wand-like device along her body. Yumiko suddenly felt her clothing drop away, leaving her stark naked. A slight panic born from a lifetime of indoctrination of propriety made her crack the other eye to make sure Bryce was not present, and she was relieved to discover she was alone with the other woman. Moments later, she floated over from the medical bed into a large coffin-shaped pod with a clear lid raised above. As she was settled into it, Farah placed a mask over Yumiko’s nose and mouth. As the mask sealed to her skin and began pumping air to her, the pod began filling with a viscous blue liquid. Despite having trained in regeneration tank medicine before, Yumiko was fascinated as the lid closed and the nanite-infused nutrient gel filled it. Instantly her pain ceased, and moments later she fell into a deep sleep as the nanites began repairing her body. She dreamed not of the past as she usually did, but of the future. Freetraders, she thought, could use someone with her skills. Perhaps she had found her niche after all…